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The New Money: If Cash is No Longer King, What Is?

Vlad Stinikov, chief creative officer at POSSIBLE Moscow, on a new form of world currency

So, how is our society changing? What is most valuable for us today? What are we ready to fight for? What is our life’s purpose? How do we measure our public activity?

Gold lost its monetary value in the 1970s when the American dollar ceased to depend on it. As a result, the dollar has become a part of a system of fiat money [inconvertible paper money made valid by government decree] but it still held an indisputable advantage over all other currency. Today we live in the world of several reserve currencies – and accept payments in yuan, pound, euro, dollar and yen. Even in roubles.

And even though we still like 'real' money, made of paper and metal, it is becoming less and less important.

Everywhere, notes and coins are replaced by 'electronic' money, thus the meaning of our 'ownership' is becoming more estranged and diminished. Do we really feel attached to the numbers we see in our mobile bank? But that’s exactly how our savings look like these days. And now they are also transforming into other numbers in our messengers, social networks and email (Facebook, VK, Google).

The next step in the world of numbers is the boom of this new uncontrolled and incredibly strange cryptocurrency – money that does not depend on anything. This is the market of trust in something that we don’t yet fully comprehend. But this trust is justified by the fact that this money cannot be manipulated: gold reserves are limited, as well as all other precious metals, but they are still easily mined or extracted, and paper can be printed.

This isn’t true for cryptocurrency.

It simply doesn’t exist.This is the foundation of our trust in it – everyone everywhere knows how much everyone else has. Simultaneous no-nonsense verification. And absolute finality.

Society has allowed and accepted full digitalisation of the world around us. This only confirms that technological advances not only help humans achieve desired levels of comfort and inch closer to self-destruction, but they also make our world more like a cyberspace. Our smartphones are a continuation of our body, they are with us even at the most intimate moments of our lives – during our sleep. Face-tracking, fingerprints, iris scanners – doesn’t it show how close we are now to our technology?

The future has come where we use our bodies to extend our reality.

Humanity in itself is the largest blockchain. We are finite. We are the basis of our economy. The world is flooding with our data and we, ourselves, are the value to any business on the market. Take, for example, one manufacturer of robotic vacuums who’s said that they are going to sell data that their robots get about our flats. We have already learned how to monetise our social media. Soon – within one generation – we’ll change the society and create new laws that let us, individual human beings, resell our data.

We’ll become cyborgs, primary blockchain, and our data and our actions will become the new currency.

A new understanding of money will emerge and constant generation of content and activity will be the new way we measure everything.

I like this kind of world. There everyone is valuable and valued, no questions asked. Goods are distributed in accordance with an individual’s ability. If you want to procrastinate and do nothing – no problem – here’s your minimum wage. But if you’re creating something new, infrastructure or culture? Humanity as a single whole organism will reimburse you for the contributions you make in its development and future. Manipulation is impossible because everyone is always seen. Slavery is impossible because you cannot make people work for you if the value of their work and the money you get from them depend on one particular life. Oh this brave new world!

Don't tell my mother I'm in advertising, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.

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